Remote Learning Was a Disaster, Minorities Hardest Hit

CLAY: Now, the other thing we were talking about off the air — and this is not as positive, but I was talking about the difference between the experience that kids are gonna have in school and you looked at that. You’ve got some data I think it was out of Newark, right?

BUCK: Yup.

CLAY: There’s all this talk — and I’m gonna let you hit the data, but my wife was a guidance counselor before we had our third kid and chaos kind of hit in our house. But this has been a big deal for her, and we’ve had this discussion a lot in the house, that the Democrats claim that they are the party of equity and inclusion and that they want to make sure that everybody has an even playing field.

And their response to covid, as it pertains to kids that are at home and might not have Wi-Fi, that may not have parents that can help them get online, may not have laptops, may not have access to the internet… Their response to covid has ensured by these kids not being able to be in school, has ensured that the poorest and the least advantaged kids among us are going to fall further and further behind compared to the advantaged kids.

And it’s as if… Randi Weingarten and all these teachers association union people, they won’t even address this but the numbers — again we try to look at data, right? On this show we try to share data. The data is terrifying for anyone who believes in equal opportunity of education.

BUCK: So this is from Chalkbeat in Newark. Just 9% of students met math standards this spring, according to the latest data. And when you start to look at what the comparisons are here, when you start to get a sense of how it lines up to pre-pandemic versus now… Now, keep in mind, Newark is a largely… It’s a majority minority district in terms of schools. There are more minorities than there are non-minorities in the school districts there.

In the public school system, 2010: Third grade math, 35% prophecy. Now, let’s keep in mind that’s not very good, but it’s 35%. As of 2021, Clay? It’s 10%.

CLAY: Ugh.

BUCK: Third grade reading 28%. This was in 2019. 2021, 14%. Cut in half. Eighth grade math, 2019: 25% prophecy; 2021, 12% efficiency. Again, cut in half. And then this was the biggest gap. Eighth grade reading, in 2019, 44% of students who took the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment were proficient in eighth grade reading.

In 2021, Clay, 12%. So a complete fall-off-the-cliff loss of what feels like years of learning because of just the way it’s going to hold them back for a long period of time after this. How do they catch up? Remember, it’s about a gap. There appears in parochial and private schools were going to school normally.

CLAY: And some good public schools.

BUCK: And some good public schools stayed open. But the public school unions are very powerful Democrat constituencies. So they weren’t going to be held to account for this. Somehow it was safe to expect that the grocery store clerks in my neighborhood —

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: — and the people who work at CVS or the Duane Reade —

CLAY: Exactly.

BUCK: — somehow it was normal to expect that they would show up for work. But it was not to be expected that teachers could go in and be around small children who as we know not only are quite safe themselves from the disease but are very unlikely to spread it to adults in the first place. This is a scandal. The data always suggested that they never should have shut down schools. They shut down schools because they could get away with it politically and because they wanted to.

And this is one of those areas where people like me and you who are saying, “This is madness,” back in the August 2020 time frame were being told, “Oh, you don’t care about the people who are on the front lines and teachers are front line workers” and all this stuff. And it was just hysteria. And it was people picking preferred constituencies and saying, “They can have special privileges.”

But the rest of us have to live by a different set of rules. It all has to do with what powerful within the Democrat Party. It’s disgusting, though. These kids are suffering, Clay. How do we catch up? What do you think? The public school system is troubled enough in Newark.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Now they’re gonna get really excellent? Plus, they’re gonna be masking kids up.

CLAY: Yeah. And, to me, this is what should be one of the main stories for the past year in terms of its long-range impact for kids. And, Buck, to your point about shutting down, remember 15 days to stop the spread or whatever the heck it was, you always fight the battles of future wars — as you well know as a military history guy, too — based on the technology of the past wars.

What’s so frustrating and what so few people will eject acknowledge now is, the decision to shut down schools was based on a hundred years ago what happened with the flu. When the flu, actually, in 1918-19 presented a substantial risk to kids in a way that covid never did. And so it was a failed process, and I think we’re gonna be unfortunately dealing with the fallout from this for generations to come.